current community

  • Stack Exchange
  • chat blog
    Meta Stack Exchange

your communities

Sign up or log in to customize your list.

more stack exchange communities

Stack Exchange
sign up log in tour help
  • Tour Start here for a quick overview of the site
  • Help Center Detailed answers to any questions you might have
  • What's Meta? How Meta is different from other sites
What is meta? ×
Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 130 Stack Exchange communities.

What HTML tags are allowed on Stack Exchange sites?

up vote 391 down vote favorite
287

The Stack Overflow site engine, as you know, uses Markdown for questions and answers. Per the Markdown spec, you are allowed to freely intermix HTML and Markdown tags.

Not all HTML tags are allowed, as that would be an XSS paradise. Which HTML tags have been whitelisted and are allowed to be used on StackExchange sites?

Return to FAQ index

support faq markdown design
share|improve this question
edited Jun 1 at 9:39

community wiki

24 revs, 14 users 15%
unknown
5  
A couple of people have sort of hinted at this, but there is limited markup available for comments. There is more information on this here - meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63286/… - but a really useful tip is to click on the help link under Add Comment, as this will provide you with a full list. This is a great posts/wiki by the way. –  Aaron Newton Dec 5 '11 at 21:48
    
Would it be wise, to allow trusted websites such as JS fiddle, to paste their br? e.g: <br "100%" "300" src="/img/spacer.gif"> –  Val Mar 24 at 21:43
3  
Is there a reason that <u> is not on this list? –  user259718 Apr 29 at 8:32
    
Can we get <center> on this list? –  Mew Oct 8 at 9:28

1 Answer 1

active oldest votes
up vote 178 down vote

Allowed HTML Tags

The Stack Exchange engine allows only the following safe, whitelisted subset of HTML tags:

<a>              - hyperlink.
<b>              - bold, use as last resort <h1>-<h3>, <em>, and <strong> are 
                   preferred.
<blockquote>     - specifies a section that is quoted from another source.
<code>           - defines a piece of computer code.
<del>            - delete, used to indicate modifications.
<dd>             - describes the item in a <dl> description list.
<dl>             - description list.
<dt>             - title of an item in a <dl> description list.
<em>             - emphasized.
<h1>, <h2>, <h3> - headings.
<i>              - italic.
<img>            - specifies an image tag.
<kbd>            - represents user input (usually keyboard input).
<li>             - list item in an ordered list <ol> or an unordered list <ul>.
<ol>             - ordered list.
<p>              - paragraph.
<pre>            - pre-element displayed in a fixed width font and and 
                   unchanged line breaks.
<s>              - strikethrough.
<sup>            - superscript text appears 1/2 character above the baseline 
                   used for footnotes and other formatting.
<sub>            - subscript appears 1/2 character below the baseline.
<strong>         - defines important text.
<strike>         - strikethrough is deprecated, use <del> instead.
<ul>             - unordered list.
<br>             - line break.
<hr>             - defines a thematic change in the content, usually via a 
                   horizontal line.

Note that since we allow the above HTML tags, to have tags show up as text you need to escape the < character. You can escape '<' by marking it as code (with indentation or backticks as is done below) or by using the HTML entity &lt;

Allowed Attributes

img Attributes

The following attributes are allowed on the <img> tag, but note that the mobile theme enforces a maximum width of 90%, so specifying a height might not scale the image proportionally on the mobile sites.

The attribute order is important! Using a different order (e.g., height before width) will strip the tag!

src="/img/spacer.gif">

a Attributes

The following attributes are allowed on the <a> tag:

class=""
title=""

Important Notes

  • HTML tags unlisted above are stripped from the output. They may render in the client preview, but they will always be removed on the server.

  • You must enter the tags exactly as shown. Any deviation from this list—adding extra spaces, using single quote or no quotes, etc.—means the tag will be stripped.

  • We do not (and will not) allow <table> tags. Sorry. This is intentional and by design. If you need a quick and dirty "table", use <pre> and ASCII layout.
share
locked by random Mar 22 at 12:36
edited Sep 24 at 17:16

community wiki

9 revs, 8 users 57%
random

This post has been locked due to the high amount of off-topic comments generated. For extended discussions, please use chat.

You must log in to answer this question.

protected by Community♦ Jul 31 '11 at 11:38

Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality answers, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site.

Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged support faq markdown design .

Related searches:
exchange allowed markdown question answer
gipoco.com is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.